The other day, as I was preparing my taxes, I saw a curious little $3 maintenance fee on my Bank of America Savings account. For the last five months, I’d been paying $3 a month in a maintenance fee that didn’t appear until November of last year (the account had been opened over a year ago). When I called, I was informed that the fee was because I had less than $300 in the account despite much more than that in the linked checking account. I had moved the funds over to the checking account because the difference in interest, much less than 1%, wasn’t worth me logging in to move funds as needed (vs. the risk of forgetting and taking a NSF fee). In my mind, I had figured that the account was one of those “minimum balance of $something, or combined account value above $something-else” and that I was safely in the $something-else category (usually it’s like $2,500 or $5,000 for something-else so I figured I was okay). Wrong, and they dinged me for $15 (of which I was able to recover $9 with a polite phone call, the other $6 were more than 90 days back and they couldn’t do it, which seems plausible).
The lesson for me here is two-fold and both are related to simplifying your finances. The first, is that as my life becomes more and more complicated, my ability to keep things “on the table” in my mind will diminish. When I was in college, concerned only with a handful of classes and almost nothing else, managing a dozen accounts was no big deal. Now, there are significantly more demands on my mindshare and thus my ability to keep track of everything lessens. One of the things that fell off the table was a monthly review of bank and credit card statements. By simplifying my finances, I can save money because I can more closely monitor my financial accounts. I can catch the $3 fee in the first month, not the fifth, and nip it in the bud.
The second lesson for me was that sometimes what appears to be a smart money move is really more hassle than its worth. More hassle means I’m less likely to do it, which can the smart money move into a stupid money move. The savings account, with its pathetic < 1.0% APY interest rate, exists only because I thought that we could maximize interest earnings. An external transfer would take several days but an internal one takes mere seconds. The savings account could be a holding tank and I would simply move funds as needed. A year later, the hassle of "mere seconds" became too great and I scrapped that strategy, thus costing me a cool $6 and 15 minutes of phone time. Simple is almost always better because I am inherently lazy.
In the future, I’ll be continuing to simplify our finances and operating under the belief that simple is almost always better (because I’m lazy), a valuable $6 lesson.
译文:
简化理财 节省开销
有一天当我准备税款的时候，我在我美国银行的储蓄账户上发现了一笔奇怪的$3的管理费。从去年11月起，过去连续5个月我每月支付$3的管理费。（账户是在一年多前开户的）当我打电话时被告知，收取这笔费用是由于账户金额不足$300，尽管相连的支票账户金额多于$300。我之所以把资金转到支票账户是因为不到1%的利息差不值得每次需要用钱时我登陆转账所花的功夫。（而我所需冒的险是忘记和支付支票退回费）我以为这个账户是属于那种“最小差额为某数额，或混合账户总额大于另一数额的类型”，而我应该在“另一数额”的安全区域。（通常为$2,500 或 $5,000，所以我觉得我没有问题）错了，他们扣了我$15（其中$9在打过一通友好的电话后他们同意退还，剩下的$ 6因为超过了90天而无法退还，貌似有道理）。
我得到了两个教训，都与简化理财有关。第一，由于我的生活变得越来越复杂，记住所有事情的能力逐渐减弱。大学时我关注的只是几堂课，仅此而已，管理几个账户根本是小菜一碟。现在，我需要关心的事情要多的多，因此跟踪所有事情发展的能力也减小了。被忽略事情的其中一个就是每月检查银行和信用卡对账单。而简化理财后，更密切地关注银行账户能让我减少花销。我可以在第一个月而不是第五个月发现$3管理费，将它掐死在萌芽阶段。
我学到的第二个教训是，有时看起来聪明的转账与收益的价值相比过于麻烦。过于麻烦意味着我做的可能性减小，使聪明的转账变成愚蠢的转账。年收益为可怜的1.0%的储蓄账户之所以存在是因为我以为可以增加利息受益。外部转账需要好几天，而内部只需要几秒钟。储蓄账户可以成为存储罐，我只要在需要时转账就可以。一年后，“几秒钟”的麻烦变得过大，我丢弃了这个策略，于是花了我$6和15分钟的电话时间。简单永远更好，因为我天生懒惰。
以后我还将继续简化理财，以简单永远更好为信条（因为我懒），这就是我价值$6的宝贵教训。